Emperor Alexander and his army were passing through Corinth. In the meantime, Alexander came to know that Diogenes the Great lived somewhere near the place. He decided to meet him and moved towards the place. Yes, he was there in the usual place on the river bank, with his pet dog beside. He was sunbathing, lying down, all naked. He did not turn his head to look at Alexander. When Diogenes understood that somebody was blocking the sunlight, he asked him to move away. At this Alexander turned angry and he shouted, “Do you know who I’m?”
Hearing this Diogenes laughed aloud and spoke to the dog that sat near him, “Listen my dog, here is a man who says that he doesn’t know who he is.”
Both Alexander and Diogenes are marked as ‘Great’. But who among them do you think is greater or really great? My votes go in favour of Diogenes, mainly because he was not at all affected by fear. Also, who else in this world can live humbler than Diogenes? Such people are special by the difference that they live in others’ hearts than in brains.
Truly, to whom does life belongs to?
According to Acharya Rajneesh, to those who know how to live. He shared one story.
In a village in India a family had a Rudra veena. It was their ancestral property which they had been moving to generations that came by. But nobody in the family knew to play this. As houses became small and small, necessary space to keep this veena became a problem. They tried to sell the veena but nobody was interested to buy it.
At last, they decided to leave it in the street waste bin and so they did. But before they reached their house back, they could hear somebody playing a beautiful Hindustani ghazel on this veena. When they turned back, they saw more people also gathering around him. The ghazel was so sweet that they decided to take the veena back. But the man playing the veena said that the instrument belongs to the one who knows to play it. Also, because they had dropped it in the public waste bin and thus humiliated it, they are no more eligible for it. The public gathered there took no time to endorsed his points.
I also remember the live story of a very expert cardiac surgeon, who left the city the very day he retired. He shifted to his hometown. The first thing he did there in his parental house was take his violin and play a Hindi song… ‘Yadom ki baraath nikali he aaj’ (procession of memories has just begun from my heart). He loved the violin very much but could not practise it because of his tight schedules.
Also, I have heard the story of world famous painter MF Hussain. In spite of many money-making chances, he continued preparing film postures. Those few coins he got from drawing pictures were everything for him. We do everything to improve our personality. I think that we have forgotten one important thing – individuality development. It is developing those aptitudes and talents that lie hidden in each and everybody. Psychologists certify that any one has the potential to grow into a genius in one or two of the aptitudes.
My doubt is that most of us are Rudra veenas destined to live unused. Those who could develop them to their full, deserve a good progress report. Actually, they only lived!
